Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/247



HEN Gaston tried to sleep, he found it impossible. His brain was on fire, every nerve quivering with some new mysterious power and his imagination soaring on tireless wings. He rolled and tossed an hour, then got up, and sat by his open window looking out over the city sleeping in the still white moonlight. He looked into the mirror and grinned.

"What is the matter with me!" he exclaimed. "I believe I'm going crazy."

He sat down and tried to work the thing out by the formulas of cold reason. "It's perfectly absurd to say I'm in love. My wild romancing about a passion that will grasp all life in its torrent sweep is only a boy's day dream. The world is too prosy for that now."

Yet in spite of this argument the room seemed as bright as day, and the moon was only a pale sister light to the radiance from the face of the girl he had seen that day. Her face seemed to him smiling close into his now. The light of her eyes was tender and soothing like the far away memory of his mother's voice.

"It's a passing fancy," he said at last, after he had sat an hour dreaming and dreaming of scenes he dared not frame in words even alone. He stood by the window again.

"What a beautiful old world this is after all!" he thought as he gazed out on the tops of the oaks whose